Lie Down with Lions (1985)

here a little longer, she thought; but it was cold, and she began to shiver, and Ellis noticed and stood up. “Let’s go, before we’re frozen to the spot,” he said brightly, and Jane thought: I wish you wouldn’t be so bloody cheerful.

She stood up with an effort of will.

Ellis said: “Let me carry Chantal.”

Jane handed the baby over gratefully. Mohammed led the way, heaving on Maggie’s reins. Wearily, Jane forced herself to follow. Ellis brought up the rear.

The slope was steep and the ground slippery with snow. After a few minutes Jane was more tired than she had been before they stopped to rest. As she stumbled along, panting and aching, she recalled saying to Ellis I suppose I have a better chance of escaping from here with you than of escaping from Siberia alone. Perhaps I can’t manage either, she thought now. I didn’t know it was going to be like this. Then she caught herself. Of course you knew, she said to herself; and you know it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Snap out of it, you pathetic creature. At that moment she slipped on an icy rock and fell sideways. Ellis, just behind her, caught her arm and held her upright. She realized that he was watching her carefully, and she felt a surge of love for him. Ellis cherished her in a way Jean-Pierre never had. Jean-Pierre would have walked on ahead, assuming that if she needed help she would ask for it; and if she had complained about that attitude, he would have asked whether she wanted to be treated as an equal or not.

They were almost at the summit. Jane leaned forward to take the incline, thinking: Just a little more, just a little more. She felt dizzy. In front of her, Maggie skidded on the loose rocks and then scampered up the last few feet, forcing Mohammed to run alongside. Jane plodded after her, counting the steps. At last she reached the level ground. She stopped. Her head was spinning. Ellis’s arm went around her, and she closed her eyes and leaned on him.

“From now on it’s downhill all day,” he said.

She opened her eyes. She could never have imagined such a cruel landscape: nothing but snow, wind, mountains and loneliness forever and ever. “What a godforsaken place this is,” she said.

They looked at the view for a minute; then Ellis said: “We must keep going.”

They walked on. The way down was steeper. Mohammed, who had been heaving on Maggie’s reins all the way up, now hung on to her tail to act as a brake and prevent the horse slithering out of control down the slippery slope. The cairns were hard to distinguish among the litter of loose snow-covered rocks, but Mohammed showed no hesitation about which way to go. Jane thought she should offer to take Chantal, to give Ellis a reprieve, but she knew she could not carry her.

As they descended, the snow thinned and then cleared, and the track was visible. Jane kept hearing an odd whistling sound, and eventually found the energy to ask Mohammed what it was. In reply he used a Dari word she did not know. He did not know the French equivalent. In the end he pointed, and Jane saw a small squirrellike animal scuttling out of the way: a marmot. Afterward she saw several more, and wondered what they found to eat up here.

Soon they were walking alongside another brook, heading downstream now, and the endless gray-and-white rock was relieved by a little coarse grass and a few low bushes on the banks of the stream; but still the wind hurtled up the gorge and penetrated Jane’s clothing like needles of ice.

Just as the climb had become relentlessly worse, so the descent got easier and easier: the path growing smoother, the air warmer, and the landscape friendlier. Jane was still exhausted but she no longer felt oppressed and downcast. After a couple of miles they reached the first village in Nuristan. The men there wore thick sleeveless sweaters with a striking black-and-white pattern, and spoke a language of their own which Mohammed could barely understand. However, he managed to buy bread with some of Ellis’s Afghan money.

Jane was tempted to plead with Ellis that they stop here for the night, for she felt desperately weary; but there were still several hours of daylight left, and they had agreed they would try to reach Linar today, so she bit her tongue and forced her aching legs to walk on.

To her immense relief the remaining four or five miles were easier, and they arrived well before nightfall. Jane sank to the ground underneath an enormous mulberry tree and simply sat still for a while. Mohammed lit a fire and began to make tea.

Mohammed somehow let it be known that Jane was a Western nurse, and later, while she was feeding and changing Chantal, a little group of patients gathered, waiting at a respectful distance. Jane summoned her energy and saw them. There were the usual infected wounds, intestinal parasites and bronchial complaints, but there were fewer malnourished children here than in the Five Lions Valley, presumably because the war had not much affected this remote wilderness.

As a result of the impromptu clinic, Mohammed got a chicken, which he boiled in their saucepan. Jane would have preferred to go to sleep, but she made herself wait for the food and ate ravenously when it came. It was stringy and tasteless, but she was hungrier than she had ever been in her life.

Ellis and Jane were given a room in one of the village houses. There was a mattress for them and a crude wooden crib for Chantal. They joined their sleeping bags together and made love with weary tenderness. Jane enjoyed the warmth and the lying down almost as much as the sex. Afterward, Ellis fell asleep instantly. Jane lay awake for a few minutes. Her muscles seemed to hurt more now that she was relaxing. She thought about lying on a real bed in an ordinary bedroom, with streetlights shining through the curtains and car doors slamming outside, and a bathroom with a flush toilet and a hot-water tap, and a shop on the corner where you could buy cotton balls and Pampers and Johnson’s No More Tears baby shampoo. We escaped from the Russians, she thought, as she drifted off to sleep; maybe we really will make it home. Maybe we really will.

Jane woke when Ellis did, sensing his sudden tension. He lay rigid beside her for a moment, not breathing, listening to the sound of two dogs barking. Then he slipped out of bed fast.

The room was pitch-dark. She heard a match scrape; then a candle flickered in the corner. She looked at Chantal: the baby was sleeping peacefully. “What is it?” she said to Ellis.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. He pulled on his jeans, stepped into his boots, and put on his coat; then he went out.

Jane threw on some clothes and followed him. In the next room, moonlight coming through the open door revealed four children in a row in a bed, all staring wide-eyed over the edge of their shared blanket. Their parents were asleep in another room. Ellis was in the doorway, looking out.

Jane stood beside him. Up on the hill she could see, by the moonlight, a lone figure, running toward them.

“The dogs heard him,” Ellis whispered.

“But who is he?” said Jane.

Suddenly there was another figure beside them. Jane gave a start, then recognized Mohammed. The blade of a knife glinted in his hand.

The figure came closer. His gait seemed familiar to Jane. Suddenly Mohammed gave a grunt and lowered the knife. “Ali Ghanim,” he said.

Jane now recognized the distinctive stride of Ali, who ran that way because his back was slightly twisted. “But why?” she whispered.

Mohammed stepped forward and waved. Ali saw him, waved back and ran to the hut where the three of them stood. He and Mohammed embraced.

Jane waited impatiently for Ali to catch his breath. At last he said: “The Russians are on your trail.”

Jane’s heart sank. She had thought they had escaped. What had gone wrong?

Ali breathed hard for a few seconds longer, then went on: “Masud has sent me to warn you. The day you left, they searched the whole Five Lions Valley for you, with hundreds of helicopters and thousands of men. Today, having failed to find you, they sent search parties to follow each valley leading to Nuristan.”

“What’s he saying?” Ellis interrupted.

Jane held up a hand to stop Ali while she translated for Ellis, who could not follow Ali’s rapid, breathless speech.

Ellis said: “How did they know we had gone to Nuristan? We might have decided to hide out anywhere in the damn country.”